What is Hiplife?

Ghanaian rap over highlife. Rap verses in Twi or other Ghanaian languages over beats that keep highlife guitar lines and rhythms, with sung highlife-style hooks.

African90–110 BPM typical

Not sure this is your track?

Drop the file in and it will tell you which category and genre it actually is, what the secondary and tertiary picks were, and what it heard that put them in that order. Free, no account, and the file stays on your device.

Identify my track

Listen for

rap in Twi or another Ghanaian language
highlife guitar riffs in the beat
sung melodic hook
bouncy mid-tempo groove

Reference artists

Reggie RockstoneSarkodieOkyeame Kwame

Anchors rather than an exhaustive canon — if your track sits near these, this is probably the right label.

Usual tempo 90–110 BPM. Sitting outside that range does not disqualify a track; it just makes the tells matter more.

Easy to confuse with

The nearest neighbours in African, by tempo. If Hiplife does not quite fit, one of these usually does.

Afro-Fusion90–110 BPM
Afrobeats blended with R&B, dancehall and hip-hop. Slower and moodier than straight Afrobeats, with afro percussion under R&B chords and a sung, often melancholy vocal at the centre.
Alté80–110 BPM
Nigerian alternative music. Hazy, understated, genre-blurring production that borrows from R&B, electronic music, dancehall and rock, with soft-spoken or half-sung vocals and a deliberately off-centre, fashion-forward feel.
Bongo Flava90–115 BPM
Tanzanian pop sung in Swahili. R&B, Afrobeats and taarab influences, emotional melismatic vocals, lush keys and a mid-tempo groove that suits both love songs and dance tracks.
Afroswing95–110 BPM
British-African crossover. Afrobeats and dancehall rhythms under UK rap and melodic R&B, with London accents, catchy sing-rap hooks and a relaxed swing.